United States
Open-armed message proclaims the pride of
New Jersey-born Vivian Hovsepian (right).
She speaks for many of the half a million Arme
nians in the United States when she says: "I'm
kind of clannish about Armenians. Most of my
friends are Armenians. And so I look for Arme
nian things."
A shared background joins young people in
a folk dance (above) at a church picnic outside
Boston. The August festival celebrates the
vineyard harvest in Armenia. The smell of
shish kebab and the strains of Armenian music
fill the air as more than 4,000 celebrators
munch hundreds of pounds of grapes blessed
by Armenian clergymen.
The snowy profile of Mount Ararat adorns a
shoulder patch worn by Sossi Dayian (left),
member of an Armenian Girl Guide troop in
Montreal attending a regional olympics in
New Jersey. While the New York-New Jersey
area once boasted the largest Armenian popu
lation in the U. S., California now holds the ti
tle. The most obvious sign of ethnic identity
lies in the "-ian" or "-yan" endings of family
names-suffixes that mean "of" or "from."
National Geographic, June 1978
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